The Bay Area News Group and the Los Angeles News Group sued the State Senate and its leaders Thursday over their refusal to release portions of the appointment calendars of two indicted and suspended state senators.

The Senate Rules Committee, under the direction of Senate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg rejected four recent requests from The Contra Costa Times to obtain calendar entries for state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who has been charged with public corruption, racketeering and weapons trafficking. The request was an attempt to find out with whom Lee met on specific dates outlined in an FBI arrest affidavit.

Secretary of the Senate Gregory Schmidt also rejected a request from the Los Angeles News Group asking for calendar entries for state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, who has been indicted on 24 counts, including public corruption, mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery and money laundering.

"At a time when two senators are under indictment for their conduct in secret meetings, you might think the legislature and its leaders would be anxious to show they have nothing to hide," said Bert Robinson, Managing Editor/Content for BANG. "We hope this suit will help persuade them to do what the law so clearly requires."

The California Legislature has drawn a hard line against disclosure over the years, insisting the public is better served by keeping legislators' activities secret rather than making them public. The government body has rejected numerous requests from news organizations for records of legislators' meetings and budgets, citing the 1991 court ruling Times Mirror Company v. Superior Court, where the court blocked a blanket request for five years worth of the governor's calendars.

However, the ruling makes a clear distinction between wide-ranging requests like the one at issue in the Times Mirror case, and more focused requests like the one made by LANG and BANG. In its wake, other government officials have continued to welcome scrutiny of their work on the public's behalf: Many local politicians provide their calendars for public inspection, as does Gov. Jerry Brown.

Not the legislature. In his most recent denial of Yee records on July 14, Schmidt wrote: "Because your request impacts upon concerns regarding legislative privilege, security, and the integrity of an ongoing criminal investigation, records that fall within the scope of the foregoing exemptions will not be produced."

The newspaper has asked for calendar records from 26 dates between October 2011 and March 2014 where Yee had been identified in the FBI affidavit as meeting with individuals in the commission of his alleged crimes. LANG has requested a dozen dates between February 2012 and March 2013 involving Calderon and meetings identified in his affidavit.

"The Supreme Court has said the deliberative process privilege requires a balancing, in each case, of the public's interest in disclosure against the public interest in secrecy," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. "Once Yee and Calderon were indicted, the scales clearly tipped in favor of disclosure. The public now has an overwhelming interest in knowing who Yee and Calderon were meeting with, what issues they were working on, etc., during the time period covered by the indictments."

Though he takes a hard line in support of secrecy, Steinberg himself has recognized that the "seriousness of the charges strike at the very heart of what it means to be a public official."

Steinberg's spokesman Rhys Williams said the Legislature had not seen the lawsuit as of Thursday afternoon and he could not comment on the particular case.

"Disclosing information of this nature would prejudice the integrity of an ongoing criminal investigation," Williams wrote in an e-mail. "Maintaining confidence in law enforcement and the criminal justice system is crucial to the public interest."

The basis of Yee's indictment — which involves his fundraiser Keith Jackson, and former Chinatown gang leader Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow, among others — is a months-long FBI sting operation involving interactions with undercover agents, many of which appear to have been recorded.

Calderon has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of accepting nearly $100,000 in cash bribes and other perks in exchange for political favors. He too was caught in an FBI sting with an undercover agent posing as a film industry executive.

Media efforts to obtain legislator calendars in 2010 and 2011 were also denied. Ironically, Yee was one of three legislators who volunteered to release their calendars at the time, only to be refused permission by the Senate rules committee.

Both BANG and LANG are sister newspaper groups under Digital First Media, which also owns The Reporter.